Six Notches Louder Than Last Spring

Bethan found out by accident, which is how these things happen.

Her car has a volume display, a number from one to forty. She got in one morning in September, turned the key, and the radio came on at twenty six, and it startled her.

Not because it was loud. Because she remembered, with an odd and specific clarity, being annoyed at her husband in March for leaving it at twenty, and thinking twenty was too much for eight in the morning.

Twenty six. Six notches, in six months.

Now nobody moves a volume knob six notches in one go. Nobody would. That would be a decision, and a decision would require a reason, and Bethan does not have a reason. What she has is twenty six.

What she does have, if she is honest, is a sound. It came in around the end of April. It is a kind of low, rising, on-and-off thing that happens above about forty miles an hour, and it is not constant, and it is worse when the road surface changes.

She has never once turned the radio up because of it. That is a true sentence and she would say it under oath.

What she has done is find, on maybe forty separate occasions, that the radio was a bit quiet, and turn it up a notch. Forty small honest adjustments, each one entirely explicable on its own, adding up to a woman who now drives to work at twenty six.

That is what avoidance looks like when it is being clever. It never presents itself as avoidance. It presents itself as forty reasonable moments.

Her daughter got in the car last week, in the passenger seat, and reached over and turned it down without saying anything, the way a teenager does.

And then she said, "Mom, why is it so loud in here?"

And Bethan said, "Is it?"

And her daughter said, "It's really loud."

And Bethan drove the rest of the way not saying anything, which is not like her.

Volume is a covering, and coverings are quiet work

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to guess what that sound is. I have not been in the car and I would not know, and somebody at a distance guessing at a noise above forty miles an hour is not helping anybody. And if that car ever feels wrong under your hands, at any speed, the radio stops being the subject and it goes to somebody qualified this week.

What I want to sit with is the six notches, and what it takes to arrive at them.

Because that was work. Quiet, unremarkable, forty-times-repeated work. And it was done by a part of a person that does not consult the rest of her, which is the part that is very good at making a life livable and not very good at telling anybody it is doing it.

You have been seen doing forty small unremarkable things that nobody counted, and Scripture says God is acquainted with all of a person's ways. Psalm 139 has Him compassing a path and a lying down and knowing every way of it, which reaches the part of a woman that never reports to the rest of her, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that knowing a kindness rather than a watch being kept.

Now let me put down the passage, because it is about noise, and almost nobody reads it that way.

And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.1 Kings 19:12

Elijah is in a cave and he is finished. Not tired. Finished. He has asked to die and he means it.

And what God sends first is not a word. It is a wind that tears the mountains. Then an earthquake. Then a fire. Three enormous loud things, one after another, and the text says the same thing about each of them: the Lord was not in it.

And then, when all the noise has run out, a still small voice.

Now, that passage is usually preached to tell people that God is quiet. That is true, and it is not the thing I want tonight.

The thing I want is the sequence. The noise came first, and it had to finish, before anything could be heard. Not because God was waiting for a better moment. Because a voice like that cannot compete with a fire, and He does not shout over things.

You are not somebody who avoids, and forty small honest adjustments are a life being managed rather than a woman running from anything. It is written that the Lord was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire but in a still small voice after them, which puts the quiet after the noise as an order rather than a preference, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a real description of a car at twenty six.

You have a life that has slowly got louder, and Scripture treats the noise as something that ends rather than something a person has to defeat. 1 Kings 19 has the wind and the fire simply pass, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that passing something a woman can wait out rather than fight.

The silence is not a test

Here is the part I want to be very careful about, because a message like this can turn into a demand.

I am not asking you to be brave. I want to say that clearly. One journey with the radio off is not a test of anything, and if it turns out to be more than this week has in it, then it is more than this week has in it, and there is no verse anywhere that will be disappointed in a woman for that.

But here is what the silence is actually for, and it is not what it sounds like.

It is not so that you can face it. It is so that you can describe it.

Because the thing that would genuinely help somebody who works on cars is four sentences. Above forty. On and off. Rises. Worse when the surface changes. And those four sentences cannot be assembled at twenty six.

So the quiet drive is not an act of courage. It is data collection. It is fifteen minutes of gathering something that only you can gather, because only you drive this car every morning.

You have permission to make one journey quiet without it meaning anything about your strength, and no part of the written word measures a woman by how much silence she can hold. 1 Kings 19 has an exhausted prophet fed and let sleep twice before God says a word to him about anything, and the Spirit of God is what makes that gentleness the actual pattern rather than the exception.

And notice one more thing about that cave, because it is the tenderest detail in the whole chapter.

When the still small voice does come, what it says first is a question. What doest thou here, Elijah? Not an instruction. Not a correction. A question, which is what you ask somebody when you want them to talk.

You were never going to be shouted at in the quiet, and that is settled by the passage rather than hoped for. 1 Kings 19 has the voice open with a question rather than a verdict, and His Spirit is what makes fifteen minutes with the radio off a safe room rather than an exposed one.